His teeth clenched and he barely managed to speak from between them. “Don’t lie to me.”
Miss Westinghouse was finishing the song she was playing and the moment she did, Lily pulled from his arms.
“Oh no, Lily, keep going! I’m going to play a jig now,” Alice called out, oblivious to the war going on between her sister and himself.
Lily gave a forced smile to her sister. “I would love to, but I find myself very tired. A slight headache. I should get some air. But please, do keep playing.”
She gave George one last fleeting look and then she stepped from the room onto the terrace. He glared after her as the pieces of this puzzle continued to fit together. She had worn a mask, that was why he hadn’t recognized her. Buthehadn’t. Which meant Lily had known who he was and what they had shared from the first time he entered the room a few days ago.
It explained everything: from her odd response to him from almost the first moment they ‘met’ to her intense worries about his future with her sister. She hadknownhe was her Ares, her lover.
“I think I ought to go check on Mrs. Manning.”
He jumped and turned to find his mother at his side. God, his mother. He was doing everything for her and if she ever discovered what had happened between him and his future wife’ssister…
His stomach turned.
“Er, no,” he said, squeezing her hand. “I-I’ll go. Miss Westinghouse is determined the two of us should be friends and it will give me the opportunity to speak to her a moment.”
His mother’s brow wrinkled as she looked up into his face. “Are you well, dearest?”
“Perfectly,” he lied, and turned away before she could see through him. Right now he feared he couldn’t mask any of his roaring emotions.
He exited the room onto the terrace and shut the door behind him. Now that the eyes of the room weren’t on him, he allowed himself a shaky breath.
“Fuck,” he muttered.
Then he began to look around the dim terrace. He didn’t see Lily immediately and pursed his lips. Had she run? Hustled over to one of the doors that led to another parlor and fled before there could be a confrontation? As if they could dodge this. Now that it was out there was nothing to do but face it. Hope it wouldn’t destroy everything.
“Lily?” he called out in a harsh whisper.
There was no answer, at least not in words, but he heard a shuddering sob from a darkened corner of the terrace. He followed it and as his eyes adjusted, he saw her.
She was leaning on the stone wall of the terrace, her shoulders shaking. She turned to face him, and in the moonlight he saw her tears were bright on her face. Despite his confusion and upset at this untenable circumstance, he felt a powerful urge to comfort her. To wipe those tears away and somehow find a way to make this better.
“Please don’t,” she said. “Just go inside and we can pretend we don’t know. That it never happened.”
And there it was. The denials had been stripped away and the truth was laid bare. It was raw and powerful and changing. It was terrible and beautiful and wrong. Which meant the idea of doing what she suggested was ridiculous.
“Impossible,” he snapped.
His breath was short as he recalled every heated moment of that night with her. Every soft shudder of her, every gasp and cry. He relived it all and wanted her just as powerfully now that he could see her entire face. Somehow he managed to push those feelings and desires away.
“Did you know who I was that night?” he asked.
Her lips parted and she stepped toward him, the color returning to her face but this time as heated anger. “How could you ask me that?”
“Because I don’t understand one damned thing about this, nor about the fact that you saidnothingto me when you must have known the truth immediately after your arrival. So I ask again, did you know that night?”
She shook her head. “Do you think if I had known that you were my sister’s intended that I would have done those things with you? That I would have purposefully betrayed her in such a horrible way?”
He pursed his lips and some of his anger faded a fraction. “No. I’ve seen you with Miss Westinghouse. You care so deeply for her, I cannot believe you would do such a thing out of malice.”
She reached back and steadied herself on the wall, another tear coming down her cheek. “But I did…I did do it.”
“We did,” he corrected her, and ran a hand through his hair as the full weight of this truth slammed down on his shoulders and threatened to crush him. “And yet you must have recognized me when you arrived, just as I already said.”
“I-I did,” she whispered, her voice breaking in the most heart wrenching way. “The moment you walked into the room that first day. I turned to look at you and my world collapsed around me like some house made of cards.”
